^^It was serious. There was an era when garbage music about candy could top the charts. 'Yummy Yummy Yummy' and ''Sugar Sugar' represented the heighth of that disgusting trend. I'd like to think Rolling Stones--------'Brown Sugar', a lively major-key song also ostensibly about candy, but actually about the sexual molestation of black slaves in America, was an extreme reaction to and parody of such putrid crap as Ohio Express and the Archies were doling out a couple years earlier. The Stones were savage, homey.

I love this song. The King of the Monsters sees stupid sh*t, and it infuriates him, and he lashes out, and his lashing out makes people go ape-poop. Response, man.

Emptiness, is my prompt.

the eternal sneaky wriggler, twistier than god's own corkscrew, sharp as split lightning

Micky Dolenz does a pretty great cover of "Sugar, Sugar" (fun fact: the Monkees were originally offered that song back in the day, but that was right when they were pulling their coup for creative control, & they rejected the hell out of it) that pretty much throws all the subtlety of the candy metaphor out the window.

**I don't know why I did this but I decided to just hit play on all the videos at once and blast it. Really just awful yet oddly amusing.

You nut! Get outta town, you rascal, you!

Nothing says 'regret' to me quite like "The Boxer". It's a beautiful major-key song, but the lyrics are so melancholy, and the chorus is just a huge minor-key whiplash. That fifth verse in particular (''In the clearing stands a boxer...") speaks to me. The sorrow of things left undone and unaccomplished. The shame and disgust at memories of half-assing and compromising and losing. Ugh. It's a real kick in the fruitstand. A cilice for the soul. A reminder to be penitent and diligent. It hurts, is the main thrust, and it's good to feel pain sometimes.

Let's have some trombones! 'Trombones' is the prompt! I don't need seventy-six by any means, nor no hundred-and-ten cornets, neither (I'm not greedy; why be greedy?)------------few of each would suit me fine.

the eternal sneaky wriggler, twistier than god's own corkscrew, sharp as split lightning